


if these sheets were the states

by neurolingual



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/F, I made myself sad, it ends happy i swear but i was like frowning when i wrote it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-07 23:25:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3187151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neurolingual/pseuds/neurolingual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(“I love you.” Asami presses her words over the bruise on Korra's eye. She echoes it on every cut and bandage she can find on Korra's body, feels Korra's hand in her hair, feels Korra's heartbeat underneath her lips, warm and strong and alive. Alive.</p><p>Korra's mouth burns like fire against Asami's lips, hands framing Asami's ribs when Asami pulls the sheets over them, closes the world away. Asami stops wondering what it's like to imagine and curls into the real thing).</p>
            </blockquote>





	if these sheets were the states

**Author's Note:**

> don't let me to listen to all time low and think about korrasami at the same time. it leads to me doing THINGS LIKE THIS. it took a turn from where i originally wanted it to go and i'm like "okay, me. way to make me sad."
> 
> i'm probably going to be writing a lot more korrasami nowadays alongside my 5h fics. because my beautiful children. i am still so elated.
> 
> pls enjoy and cry about lonely!Asami with me
> 
> (also if you're wondering if there's going to be a second part to "be a girl like any other": i wasn't originally going to go past it being a one-shot, but new things have arrived in my job that i wish to complain about through the voice of korra, so. look out for that having a second part in the future!)

The bed doesn't feel cold without Korra's presence, necessarily.

It feels hollow, like her absence is a gap where Asami could tether, could place her hand above Korra's heart and feel the steady thump of her heart, warm and moving and alive.

It's burrows deeper than just missing the feel of Korra's skin against her fingertips. There's a tear in her walls, broken over healed scar tissue and loss; she'd never thought she'd have to feel the absence of another loved one when she was sure Korra would be there to mend what needed fixing.

Asami rolls over the sheets, curls into Korra's pillow, still smells Korra's perfume from their night out a week ago before she was torn away and washed clean, taking saddle on a bison with Opal to Ba Sing Se to recover the last of the remaining towns beaten down by bandits. She can see Korra's shadow, can envision where the ends of her hair would play out across the pillow top, and she whispers goodnight against the storm raging outside her windows, through the rain clawing at the shutters with a dawning howl.

She hopes Korra can hear her from states and states away.

 

 

 

Asami knew what she was walking into. She fell into Korra's open embrace and never wanted to look back.

But it doesn't stop her from missing every inch of Korra, down to the cold toes she wants to feel pressed against her calves in the rude morning of a Monday sunrise.

She wants Korra's gentle hand on her back during public speeches; they were easy for her to muddle through, to tone down her jargon enough for the public majority to understand her words. Without it, Asami manages to lose herself in her head space, and the word _aerodynamics_ seems to lose half the crowd in a cluster of belated camera flashes.

She wants the interruptions at the factory –  Korra tearing her away from her projects covered in grease from the high point of her brow and over the collar of her shirt, smeared by her own hand – for packed lunches from Pema or for guidance on Korra's own workings with the public, or to hide away in Asami's office to swallow each other like the teenagers they missed out on being together, with tender hands and rough teeth and bruising on Asami's neck, present enough for her workers to giggle at underneath the fenders of the Satomobiles they're fixing, with her hair untucked from it's ponytail and her welding goggles half-on and half-falling down her forehead.

She wants Korra's noise in the apartment they share: the clattering of tea cups in the morning before the news, the soft hums and snores Korra huffs into Asami's collar at night, the slurp of noodles Asami hates (doesn't hate but it coils warm in her belly to see Korra's ears turn red as she wolfs down the rest of her take-out as quietly as she can), Korra's broken and off-pitch singing to the tunes of the latest Big Band. Every corner of her apartment is masked in a silent shadow, every crevice is quiet for their own reasons; there's not so much as a creak in the floorboards from Korra's stomping.

She wants to feel something other than the loneliness that keeps her waiting up at night, to maybe catch a glimpse of Korra scattering through their bedroom window instead of using the front door, like the civilized human Asami has come to think if her as.

(It's not uncivilized, it's romantic!" Korra plowed on over her mouthful eggs; Asami tried not to notice the particles that spat from her mouth onto the counter top keeping them apart.

"It's not romantic when you scare me half to death," Asami grumbled into her coffee.

Korra shrugged. "At least it's not _all the way_ to death. That wouldn't be good."

"Keep climbing in through windows dressed in dark colors and we'll see how close to dying I get.")

She wants her girlfriend to come home without anymore scars. She knows Korra can take the beating, but her skin is so fragile and she worries it will move from physical to nightmares, and Korra's come a long way from the seventeen year old too stubborn to let herself feel pain. Korra tells Asami she's fine, and Asami has all the hope in her heart to believe it, but she makes sure to give extra kisses to the scars still healing and scattered with dry blood when they're masked in the private darkness of their bedroom.

She wants Korra to be home for longer than one-day stints. She wants Korra to stop having to be whisked away before sunrise, to leave Asami with only just a note and a packed lunch in the fridge.

Asami feels selfish, wanting a woman who belongs to the world for herself, wanting a heart that's loved for thousands of years; guilt wipes down her spine when she's sketching Korra's face instead of the new models for mechasuits she has a deadline for.

President Reiko wouldn't be too thrilled to see Asami delving into art instead of fixing his city – _her_ city.

But he had never cut Korra any slack and Asami thinks he can deal with his brightest mind losing sleep over the fact that her girlfriend is almost never in bed to keep her warm.

 

 

 

(At night, Asami wonders where Korra's head lies on her bed when she's away. She wonders if Korra still sleeps on the left side, on her side (in the bed they share), if she starfishes herself out like Asami would see when she came into Korra's room when the wheelchair was still her legs. When she didn't have to make room for another body when she was her most vulnerable.

She wishes she could fold the dirt roads and the forests and the rubble of the revolution over and over, bring Korra closer when she clutches the bedsheets to her chest, wishes she didn't feel so alone in the night when her mind couldn't bare the balance of reality of being by herself again.

She wishes Korra was there to wake her from the nightmares she has in Korra's absence; the ones where she watches her father die, watches her mother being pulled into flames, watches Korra have the air bent out of her lungs.

Asami wants to fold the sheets over on their bed and see Korra's tired eyes and small pout of being woken glaring her back in the face.

She's especially her loneliest in the middle of the night, when the sun is just starting to creep over the mountains, but the other half of the world is shrouded in darkness. When Korra's in the light and she's still in the shadows. When Korra tends to new wounds in the morning Asami is unable to wrap with gauze herself.

She just has to imagine Korra's breath on her collar. It's enough to get her to sleep, some nights. She still has to hide the gray under her eyes in the morning with concealer).

 

 

 

The skeleton of the airship holds inside it's barren darkness, untouched since the last time they were all together inside it, before Kuvira, before Korra had fallen to Zaheer, before Asami had thought too much into the brush of her's and Korra's knuckles.

It's broadcast signal reaches the farthest out of all the radios Asami has ever made; she could radio all the way to the Fire Nation from where the beast laid for rest, in the belly of her factory, hidden away from the progression of the world around it. That's why it was Asami's finest work; no other company could quite reach the profession her work on this particular airship had undergone, and she could radio to any city on the world from wherever the skies took her.

Today, it's taking her to Korra. Like it always does. Like it has for many years.

She runs her manicured nails along the switches, dimly lit by the emergency light she's left on. The radio still rings out static, waiting for Korra's to connect. Asami busies herself with changing the volume, fading static in and out of her ears.

Korra's voice comes as a broken shout at first. Asami's heart leaps, and she grabs for the receiver.

“Korra?”

“As-” something crashes from Korra's line. It sounds like the smash of a rock. “Asami! This is _not_ a good time.”

Asami stands, not sure she can keep still. Her free hand moves to her chest, clenching in a fist. “What's going on? Are you okay?”

She thinks she hears _bandits_ or _triad_ or something dangerous; it's all dangerous, whatever situation Korra gets herself in. She can never just take a peaceful trip to a archaic village to run some modern-progressing errands for the mayor. It always ends in violence.

“Can I get back to you?” Korra's voice is strained, already coming in through static waves. “I gotta deal with-”

Asami hears a yelp and another crash, a clatter of something against the ground. Korra's name falls of her lips in a frenzy, her heartbeat working it's way to the speed of her racing mind, her skin frozen cold.

“Korra!” Asami cries, slumping down into the chair when the line falls dead.

Her eyes are too warm, her skin too tight. The air is musty and her lungs squeeze. She listens for to the static for some while, listens to it echo throughout the metal skeleton, taunting her with uncertantity.

Korra is fine, she reminds herself. Korra is always find. She always finds her way back home.

But she stares at the receiver and the static makes itself fuzz in her eardrums. Her heartbeat is so loud, it could deafen.

(Her assistant comes looking for her, knowing she's accustomed to tucking away into the chambers of the once mighty airship when Korra isn't around. He finds her with her head slumped against the control panel, face red and puffy, receiver clutched in one hand.

The sun falls below the horizon through the small window in the basement of the factory).

 

 

 

It's cold, now. She feels hollow. It's not just her bed.

Nothing is warm and Asami is on high alert where everything is against her skin: the silk of the pillow on her cheek, the mascara smeared over the bridge of her nose, a fist in the sheets and another on Korra's pillow.

She's been alone for the last three years of her life; at this point, she figures her skin is steel, that her heart is solid and nothing can leak. But Korra hasn't been in contact with her for days, and Tenzin said he hadn't heard anything from Opal, either. The two of them hadn't been able to be reached since Asami heard the attack first hand.

She feels less than herself, less than the skin she's grown into. Her bones feel brittle, like the wind could blow her away to ash if she allowed it do so.  
Her lids feel heavy but her eyes refuse to close. It was like this when Asami had the time to mourn her father. But Korra was behind her, hands tight around her belly and holding Asami close.

Asami wants to close her eyes, wants to feel Korra behind her again.

Asami wants the Real Korra back, not the imagined one she sees in every corner when she's gone.

The days roll past and everything is silent. Bolin is the only one who looks Asami in the eyes when they all congregate around the radio on Air Temple Island. He understands the bags under her eyes she no longer chooses to hide, presses his thumb to her knuckles when her hand shakes and Su tells them all over the radio that she hasn't heard from Opal or Korra either.

Reiko is all over her, and Asami almost snaps on him. Varrick steps in front of her before Asami has the chance to open her mouth, and it brings her blood to a boil. She wants to tell President Reiko all the things running through her mind, all the demands he's throwing at her, all the work he's crushing her with.

She hates Varrick for stopping her, but she gives him a gentle nod when they leave the office, walking to their respective cars. He kept her from losing her head; she could have made one slip and lost it all on top of what was already gone.

Pema tries everything she can to make Asami feel welcome at the Temple. She stopped staying in the apartment because she could see Korra everywhere she turned, from the mess of newspapers on the coffee table to the mug of tea left sitting cold on the counter top before she was gone.

She makes Asami's favorite food (provided it be the vegetarian style), and has the Air Acolytes prepare her a warm bath during the nights she wakes up screaming.

When it goes two weeks in silence, Asami feels her hope slipping through her fingertips.

But when Tenzin gets a call in the middle of the night from Su, saying her soldiers spotted a bison a few miles out from Zaofu and they were leading it back, Asami's bones feel taped back together, and a broken sob breaks from her throat when Bolin wakes her in the middle of a fitful sleep to relay the good news.

She's lost so much in her short life; she was finally getting something back.

When Opal and Korra are to arrive home, Tenzin tries to move Asami back into her temporary room, but she's having none of it. Bolin is at her side, too, and Mako is behind them, looking disheveled and torn from being woken at such an hour for the arrival of the airship.

It's the peak of morning when they see the airship making it's way over Republic City; Asami almost throws up.

When it lands down by the docks, she takes off, bypassing Tenzin's outstretched hand, ignoring his worried shouts not to rush them. She feels gravel and sand and dirt dig into her heels, tears burning at her eyes when she can see Su helping Opal down the bank.

Korra leans against the railing, a bandage wrapped around the expanse of her bicep, another peeking through the torn torso of her shirt.

Asami stops short, catching Korra's eyes with the dust she kicks up around herself.

(Korra grins crookedly, and Asami can see the bruise around her eye when she lifts her head. Asami can't stop the tears that fall).

She carefully moves around Su and Opal, hearing Bolin's distant shouts in the background when she slams into Korra's chest, bringing her fingertips to run through matted hair, and he tucks Korra's face into the crook of her neck and _breathes_.

“You should be sleeping,” Korra croaks against her neck, and Asami holds her closer, hangs from Korra's bones and presses her lips to the crown of her forehead.

“Don't you ever.” Asami takes Korra's face in her hands, runs her thumb over Korra's cracked lips. “ _Ever_. Scare me like that.”

Korra smiles under Asami's thumb; Asami can feel the skin peeling beneath her print. “I was going to sneak through your window. Make a dramatic,” she winces, her arm twitching against Asami's chest. “Make a dramatic entrance.”

Asami chokes on a garbled laugh, presses her mouth to Korra's and drinks her in, tips Korra's chin for the best angle, sweeping her thumbs over Korra's jaw.

(“I love you.” Asami presses her words over the bruise on Korra's eye. She echoes it on every cut and bandage she can find on Korra's body, feels Korra's hand in her hair, feels Korra's heartbeat underneath her lips, warm and strong and _alive_. Alive.

Korra's mouth burns like fire against Asami's lips, hands framing Asami's ribs when Asami pulls the sheets over them, closes the world away. Asami stops wondering what it's like to imagine and curls into the real thing).

**Author's Note:**

> hit up my [tumblr](http://neurolingual.tumblr.com/ask) and lemme know what you thought!
> 
> ****i went back and edited a bit because my friend pointed out to me i have a tendency to write "loose" instead of "lose" like a fucking idiot


End file.
